DECISION POINT: In a live $2/$4 cash game action folds to the Middle Position player who limps. Next to act, MP2 raises to $20, the Hijack calls and you call from the Button with 7♣6♣. The Small Blind raises to $70, MP2 calls, and you call. The Small Blind bets $175 on the 9♠6♥8♥ flop and MP2 raises to $1,000. Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing in a $2/$4 cash game with $600 (150BBs) and several opponents have us covered. We are dealt 7c6c on the Button and it folds to MP1 who limps and MP2 isolation raises to $20. The Hijack calls, the Cutoff folds and action is on us.

When we’re able to play in position and are deep stacked in a multiway pot for less than 5% of the effective stacks this is a very profitable situation for us, so we call. The Small Blind then raises to $70 and everyone but MP2 folds.

This bet represents a much more significant portion of our stack, nearly 10% more to call. We do have several factors in our favor here however, given there is already $188 in the pot so we are getting immediate pot odds of nearly 4:1, we close the action, and we’re in position for the rest of the hand. If the Small Blind had made a much larger raise we could potentially fold here but the odds to continue with our speculative hand are much too compelling so we call.

The flop is 9s6h8h and the Small Blind continuation bets for $175. MP2 raises to $1,000, which is all-in for the effective stacks and $530 more as far as we’re concerned. Since we are faced with an all-in situation and are likely behind, this is a spot where we should be calculating our outs and see if we’re being given the proper pot odds to continue.

Depending on our opponent’s holdings we could easily have somewhere between 6-13 outs. Counting the three 7s as potential outs is likely optimistic in this spot, so more realistically we have 6-10 outs. If we simplify this to say that on average we have 8 outs, then we have roughly 32% equity using the rule of 4. This means we need to be getting at least 2:1 pot odds to continue.

There’s $943 in the middle (since we can only count $530 of the $1,000 raised due to effective stacks) and we have to call $530 so we aren’t quite getting the necessary 2:1 pot odds. You could also easily argue that even if we always had 10 outs here, our opponents could easily hold hands like sets or big pairs with a backdoor flush draw that can sometimes redraw and hit even when we do hit our hand.

It feels painful to call with a hand speculatively and then hit one of the better possible flops for your hand and have to fold it, but in this particular instance it is very unlikely we have the best hand and we just aren’t getting the price to continue.

Folding is the best play.